Sunday, December 24, 5:00pm – “Lessons and Carols, UU-Style”
An untraditional service, crafted with families in mind, of Lessons & Carols with traditional texts set against modern poetry and prose. The trombone choir will play a brass prelude beginning at 4:45.

Sunday, December 24, 9:00pm – “For the Time Being,” a service of Lessons and Carols based on W. H. Auden’s famous Christmas poem.
A dramatic reading of W. H. Auden’s For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio in the form of colorful monologues spoken by the traditional characters in the Christmas story. Widely viewed as one of Auden’s greatest works in which he reconsiders the idea of faith in modern times, the poem recasts the story as relevant to finding hope in the dark days of the ancient world, and ours. The choir sings at the 9pm service.

Alice Swan

Even though the UCE annual meeting and election is six months away, your Nominating and Recruiting (N&R) Committee is already hard at work. Per UCE bylaws, N&R is responsible for identifying candidates for positions that are elected by the church membership. Those positions are the Board of Trustees (3 new members annually), the Endowment Committee (1 trustee annually) and N&R (3 new members annually). UCE bylaws can be found here.

We are currently reviewing our church membership lists to see who we think might be ready to move into various church leadership roles including, but not limited to the positions listed above. To that end, we have begun scheduling one-on-one conversations with some members we feel may have potential to become more involved church participants.

However, there are only nine of us and several hundred of you, many of whom we would like to meet and get to know better. In addition, we are feeling a need to support and embrace our church’s progress toward increasing our diversity – diversity of thought and experiences and ways of approaching problems. Accordingly, we are taking this early opportunity to reach out to all our UCE members to get your suggestions and comments for people we should be considering. Specifically, if you know anyone you think we should be considering for a position, including yourself, please let us know.

If you are looking for additional ways to focus your time and talent, speak to or email our N&R Co-Chairs Shirley Adams and Alice Swan or any N&R team member (Chris Allender, Steve Courtright, Ally Hunter, Sarah Iles, John LaPlante, Ruth Orme-Johnson and Steve Serikaku). We can then follow up with more one-on-one interviews and make sure that the Unitarian Church of Evanston is as representative and responsive as possible.  Thank you for your advice and help in this important part of church life.